Spread explained

I'm going to be fairly brief as christmas is coming up and I've got a shitload of things to do D;

So what is this abomination called spread?

Spread basically consists of two of three components:

1. Spread due to weapon firing faster than the body can counter it, such as the increasing spread from shot to shot during automatic fire. I don't think people have any complaints about this as it's pretty damn obvious so I wont go into that...

2. Internal weapon spread. Weapons just don't have the accuracy to thread a needle at 300 meters... The bulllet might not be perfectly shaped, it might not fit perfectly in the barrel, there might be inconsistencies in the power burn rate as well as powder load, etc etc.. You just can't get 100% accuracy with projectiles, ever. Plus even then you still have the environment to mess things up, wind speed, temperature, heck the world is even spinning which has an effect of bullets, crazy as it might sound. So there you have it, no weapon has 100% accuracy, ever.

However, people often confuse this with the 3rd type of spread, which a lot of people seem to not even know that it exists, which really should be the most obvious type of spread unless you're a clueless caveman...

3. Spread due to poor weapon handling. This is by far the most significant type of spread which the game is simulating. You can see it all the time, when you run jump and crawl the crosshair spreads itself wide and the weapon screaming "Nooo, don't shoot me like this D: You'll rape me D: "

So what is this "poor weapon handling"?

It's almost identical to #1 really. When you're not supporting a weapon properly you get a lot of side effects; such as "increased" recoil because your body isn't absorbing it properly. But you also get far less visible effects, things you can only really see if you look at where your bullets really went. Because you don't support your weapons properly - maybe too loose or even too tight - you put forces into play which minutely affect where the barrel is pointing during the time of firing.

It's not so surprising really. When you pull the trigger you need to put about 2-5 kg's of force onto it. It's safety precaution so you can't snag it onto something and missfire. Plus soldiers are pumping with adrenaline in combat which makes fingers not always do what you really want them to, you really don't want to fire unless you really do want to fire. So you put all that force into the trigger, which means you put an equal amount of force into the grip in the opposite direction (hello newton). From there on the hammer strikes the primer which explodes and in turn makes the powder explode. You now have an explosion inside the weapon which forces a ~4-10 gram bullet to fly off at extreme speed down a very tight barrel creating a big pressure and a 0.5-1kg lump of metal in the opposite direction.

All of this happens from the moment you decide you want to fire until the bullet leaves the barrel, and it's not until it leaves the barrel that it's free from your errors in weapon handling. Is it really that surprising that you might do a mistake that causes the barrel to not point where you want it to? You can't really see it with the naked eye because it happens so fast, but it's there.

So what are the errors that can cause this type of spread?

Here's a picture hanging on my firing range, it's a great tool for new shooters, or old ones as well for that matter. It's easy to get into a bad habit which affects your accuracy.
(Translated it for you so you wont have to learn Swedish)

And yes, this is based on single shot pistols. Your spread can be this horrible even on the first shot.

Wait.. I actually read everything on that picture and didn't just skip it because I'm a lazy whiner.. What the hell do you mean with "Deliberate firing"???

Well, As you can see on that picture there are *a lot* of errors you can do with hos you fire a weapon. The most important and common one is actually that last one. Deliberate firing.

What "deliberate firing" means is that you find your target and pull the trigger. Bad idea. I'm sure you've heard this loads of times in movies etc, but you have to slowly squeeze off the trigger. Sure in war you do it faster, but you really do have to squeeze it off rather than do a quick jerk. All your efforts in carefully aiming is completely wasted if you at the last second jerk the gun off target. This is a very hard thing to learn and perform consistently. You see a target and you want to fire, so you pull the trigger of course, it's a natural thing to do. The gun goes boom when the trigger is pulled.

When you want a good shot you should focus entirely on the sights being on target and then slowly squeeze the trigger until it goes boom. If you got surprised that it went boom, you most likely got a very good shot. That means your brain was completely relaxed and didn't do anything stupid to unnecessarily prepare for the incoming boom which can result in any one of those previously listed errors to occur.

You have to really push it into the brain and muscles NOT to jerk the trigger but to give it a super smooth squeeze without moving any other muscles in the hand, not to tighten the grip too hard but also not relax them too much. You have to do it just right. That's why soldiers and competitive shooters constantly go to the range just to keep that skill alive.

I know it can be a hard thing to understand, it's even hard for new shooters to understand let alone someone ruined by years of mouse click 100% accuracy shooting

So, I get my grip in order. I can fire with 100% accuracy now right?

Wrong.

You still need the correct shooting stance. You need your feet properly set to the ground and lean into the recoil to absorb it or else you could easily lose the gun or even get knocked down. And really, you don't run and shoot accurately.. That's pretty stupid, I wont go into that here...

Here is a video where I quickly demonstrate 5 different shooting grips / stances at 10-15 meters. It was damn cold and it was getting dark fast. My aim was in the middle each time, I should hit dead center right? right?

Target 1
Target 2
Target 3
Target 4
Target 5

So ask yourselves this... Can you do all of this perfectly every time? Even when you're getting shot at?

And yeah, this was the fairly brief one

Quoted

(14:06:57) Riesig: I should stop now. People might get sig material again

This post has been edited 1 times, last edit by "Aenonar" (Dec 21st 2012, 1:30pm)

What Aenonar is showing is how much actually goes into accurately placing a shot on target. Most people think it's as simple point and pull but there are a myriad of things that can go wonky (mostly unintentionally) from the moment you get a sight picture and squeeze to when then round leaves the barrel. He is providing real world background to what we enjoy in game as the magical "spread" value.

Nice, I suppose, but what does this have to do with BF3? Are there people think weapons really fire hitscan bullets in real life or something?

Most people actually believe that if your sights are on the target it should hit everytime.

The most common hate for suppression is just that: "My sight is on target so I should hit"

And another general hate for bullet spread is "my bullets magically fly off at weird angles when the barrel is pointing straight ahead"

Me and my brother were standing at ~10-15 meters, some bullets aimed dead center can easily be off target by up to 50 cm just because of some basic error like deliberate firing or bad stance, that's an angle of 2-3 degree right there on the first shot.. BF3 has a max spread of 7 degrees

To think that a soldier under the stress of being shot at wouldn't have similar things occurring.. Really..?

Quoted

(14:06:57) Riesig: I should stop now. People might get sig material again